Reviews

The Welsh National Opera, Nanci Griffith and more.

Welsh National Opera
Grand Opera House, Belfast

By Michael Dervan

Six years ago, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland stopped funding its largest opera client, Opera Northern Ireland (ONI), and adopted the recommendation of a review group to put its weight behind a new, all-Ireland company.

In the interim, before the new company was set up, Belfast would be provided with a replacement for ONI through a contractual arrangement with either Welsh National Opera or Opera North, which is based in Leeds.

The new all-Ireland company seems not even to be a twinkle in anyone's eye any more, and WNO have paid annual visits to the Grand Opera House in Belfast since 1999; after the last such visit, last week, their place will be taken next year by Opera North.

By curious coincidence, WNO's final Belfast season featured Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos, the very work with which ONI had scored such a spectacular early success.

Ariadne is a wonderful mixture of the sublime and the ridiculous.

The new WNO production, directed by Neil Armfield and designed by Dale Ferguson, sets the prologue in the busy backstage area of a very full-size theatre, on the basis that the richest man in Vienna could surely have afforded such a place. And it doesn't monkey about with that rich man's edict for the opera he's paid to be performed at the same time and on the same stage as the commedia dell'arte entertainment he has also ordered - all to make sure the fireworks can start on the dot for his dinner guests.

The comic timing and detail of the backstage business were a treat. Imelda Drumm skilfully negotiated the extremes of the composer, the trampled-on boyish idealism, the hormonal head-turning by the very person who is destined to spoil his opera, the worldly-wise Zerbinetta (the vocally agile but sometimes shrill Katarzyna Dondalska).

The desert-island setting of the opera within the opera was conveyed by a simple stage setting, rather the worse for wear.

Janice Watson was touching in grave despair of Ariadne, and Peter Hoare's Bacchus (who, initially mistaken for death, wins her heart) expressed a rare kind of bedazzled wonder.

One of the wonders of this opera is Strauss's extraordinary use of an orchestra of just three dozen player, whose contribution on this occasion was nicely marshalled by Anthony Negus, even if there were a few rough edges of ensemble here and there.

The other opera was a revival by Jean-Michel Criqui of Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser's production of Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride.

This was a typically spare-looking affair - sets by Christian Rätz, costumes by Etienne Couléon, the colours predominantly grey, save for a burst of red sash for the appearance of Diana.

But the evening seethed with dramatic interest, the grouping and movement of the chorus was handled with especial resourcefulness, and in the title role Ann Murray conveyed the sort of intensity that made her seem as if she owned the stage.

There were times when her vibrato seemed too consistent, and even dangerously wide, more something that happened than something which sounded essential.

But the depths she probed were extraordinary, the grip she exerted extreme, the range of expression she encompassed astonishing.

The lean orchestral playing under Michael Hofstetter was sculpted with impressive musical point.

4.48 Psychosis
The Granary

By Mary Leland

The power - in this case destructive - of the inner voice is the fuel which drives the last play written by the late Sarah Kane, 4.48 Psychosis, the final item in the Granary Repertory Season programme.

Personified by four white-gowned female characters these voices chart what at one point is described as congenital anguish.

The hour of the title is said to be that at which the life force is at its lowest ebb, the time of the dark before dawn, although to judge by this text it is also the time of most intense and frantic energy. The play - it's more like a collage, really, an accumulation of emotions and accusations - unravels in a bleakly clinical environment.

Its interweaving speeches shred any attempt at narrative coherence yet provide a structure in which certain themes are exposed: how in mental breakdown the imagination collapses in on itself, the use of chemicals for the control of despair, the fact that depression is not only a terminal illness but is also a contagious one, ways in which self-harm or attempted suicide can be seen as a paring away of the very skin of its victim - a physical as well as a mental evisceration as difficult to witness as to endure.

Director Tony McLean-Fay sculpts this mass of material with skill; his visually compelling lighting, costuming and movement offer a symmetry which has several reference points, not least the old one of a Bedlam, the mind's nightmare.

His imposition of coherence allows the flow and force of the writing to take shape and offers a stylistic interpretation which validates Kane's attempt to express pathological confusion and grief.

The original score by Peter Jackman supports both writing and direction, becoming at times a presence in itself.

This may not be an important play (it is certainly not a comforting one) but in this presentation it seems important, all the more so given the quality of the performances from a cast led by an impressive Charlotte Murphy.

4.48 Psychosis is expected to move to the Project in Dublin early next year.

Nanci Griffith
Olympia Theatre

By Alex Moffatt

Nanci Griffith concerts always offer value for money.

On Saturday night, her Olympia audience got almost three hours of music, including hugely entertaining support from the Crickets, Buddy Holly's old band. They may be portly and greying, but the Crickets performed classics like That'll Be The Day and Peggy Sue with polish and conviction.

Nanci Griffith is promoting a new album and drew heavily from it in her set.

Unfortunately, the songs are second-rate, with unmemorable melodies and sentiments that swing from political preachiness (Heart of Indochine) to twee sentimentality (Beautiful).

However, these lapses were more than made up for by a wide array of songs from her spectacular back catalogue and by her outstanding singing.

Her vocals were full of emotional conviction and were, if anything, strengthened by the way her voice has become deeper and more weathered over the past decade.

She opened with an acoustic version of one of her earliest songs, There's a Light Beyond These Woods, and gave it new depth with an extended, improvised ending.

An arrogantly assured, rocking Listen to the Radio then gave the Blue Moon Orchestra a chance to hit their stride, while John Prine's Speed of the Sound of Loneliness showed the band's more sensitive side.

It's more than a decade since Griffith recorded it but the arrangement, with its subtle percussion and wailing guitar, is still stunning. A string of songs from the new album then got in the way and it was a relief when she returned to classics such as Gulf Coast Highway, where the contrast between her vocals and those of keyboard player James Hooker was exquisite - Griffith sang with direct, heartfelt emotion while Hooker twisted the melody in a detached, almost ironic way.

This was followed by an exposed Late Night Grande Hotel, where Hooker's rich, percussive keyboard accompaniment almost transformed the ballad into a hymn. The Blue Moon Orchestra and the Crickets united for the last few songs, including a rousing Well Alright, rounding off a hugely enjoyable evening.

RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet, RTÉCO/Gugerbauer
Mahony Hall, The Helix, Dublin

By Michael Dungan

Rossini - William Tell Overture
Respighi - The Birds
Vaughan Williams - Tallis Fantasia.
Beethoven - Symphony No 8.

The RTÉ Concert Orchestra concluded its Beethoven Plus series with a slightly strange but effective programme at the Helix on Saturday night.

Rossini's programmatic overture to his opera William Tell was a late addition to the advertised programme which otherwise combined Beethoven with 20th century works inspired by music of earlier times.

The first of these was Respighi's The Birds, four affectionate, ornithological portraits using short Baroque pieces by Pasquini, de Gallot and Rameau, each one dressed in romantic orchestral costumes.

Visiting conductor Walter Gugerbauer gave warm accounts, though not too sentimental, with the Dove's long, languorous melody finding oboist Peter Healy in his best voice.

In Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, a sober, ecclesiastical spirit and the chill of history seem to reach out from the music.

It moves little, harmonically or rhythmically, and so has a still, rather eerie quality like a dark painting.

Gugerbauer accordingly drew a rich, oaken tone from Vaughan Williams's unconventional configuration of two string orchestras and string quartet (the RTÉ Vanbrugh).

The orchestra concluded its month-long sequence of Beethoven's even-numbered symphonies with No. 8. Gugerbauer declined to take the whirlwind finale at quite the exhilarating lick the players might well have expected from Laurent Wagner, their principal conductor.

Nor did Gugerbauer choose to give any advantage in balance to the wind instruments in relation to the strings, so that the overall effect - despite the relatively small size of the RTÉCO - was quite old-fashioned.

That said, the music danced nimbly and ran with strength.

The violins sounded as one in their delicate, Italianate melody over the clockwork ticking of the Scherzo - a merry-witted tribute to the newly-invented metronome - and there were smooth, lyrical solos from the horns and clarinet in the third movement's Trio.

O'Rourke, RTÉ NSO/Sakari
NCH, Dublin

By Michael Dungan

Gráinne Mulvey - Scorched Earth.
Rachmaninov - Piano Concerto No 3.
Mussorgsky/Ravel - Pictures at an Exhibition.

Scorched Earth by Grainne Mulvey (b. 1966) presents searing, cinematic images of a post-bushfire landscape.

An angry undercurrent of thundering drums continues in stark contrast with the sustained, high-pitched sonorities of upper woodwind and string registers as Mulvey confidently and effectively manipulates notes and their overtones to add an edgey feel.

The piece, commissioned by RTÉ, received a persuasive and atmospheric premiere from the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra under visiting conductor Petri Sakari on Friday night.

Míceál O'Rourke was a rather subdued soloist in the meaty outer movements of Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 3. His diffident playing was light of touch and bafflingly short on passion.

There didn't seem to be any technical issues, this borne out by his calm mastery of the first movement's showy cadenza which nonetheless was characterised more by quiet accuracy than brilliance or sparkle.

His most persuasive playing came in the nocturne-like music of the second movement intermezzo. Here a pianistic lineage including the thoughtful poetry of both Chopin and Mendelssohn allowed O'Rourke his strong suit.

Ravel's orchestration of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition holds a special place in the popular repertoire.

Just the idea of walking from picture to picture - with the walk having its own music - and one artist celebrating another (Mussorgsky was a friend of the painter, Victor Hartmann) makes for a singularly appealing premise.

Sakari extracted strong, balanced playing from all quarters in an honest, straightforward performance that had the effect of letting a most eloquent score speak for itself.

Perhaps there has been a louder, more terrifying Hut on Fowls' Legs or a quicker Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks. But in the broader picture - indeed of 10 pictures - the balance was just right.